The article in the Southern Metropolis Daily – one of the "bolder" Chinese papers – appeared to allude to the work of Ai and jailed activist Tan Zuoren in attempting to tally the deaths of children in the many schools that collapsed.

An estimated 90,000 people were killed or remain missing following the 7.9-magnitude earthquake, which rocked the south-western province in May 2008. But authorities suppressed discussions of the high death toll among schoolchildren and harassed protesting parents after it became an increasingly potent subject. Many blamed the number of deaths on shoddy construction linked to official corruption.

Although written in a highly literary, allusive style, the editorial includes several phrases clearly reminiscent of Ai's work.

They include a reference to victims who "lived happily on this earth for seven years, or for longer or shorter periods of time". Ai's installation Remembering used 9,000 children's backpacks to spell out a grieving Sichuan mother's words: "She lived happily for seven years in this world."

A later section goes further, noting: "On the day of mourning we called them home and wished them peace. We gathered together all the human evidence of them we could. We read their names together ... We did so much, and yet we did too little ... We can but present the steel zodiac, offer up porcelain sunflower seeds, symbolic memorials to your lives once so tangible."

Ai sought to compile a list of all the dead children; his work Missing is a three and a half hour recording of volunteers reading out their names. His installation Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern, made up of 100m porcelain seeds, has become one of his best-known works, while his re-creation of bronze fountainheads in the shape of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac was unveiled at Somerset House in London on Wednesday. "For people who are aware of Ai Weiwei's work there is an unmistakable implication pointing to his work relating to reckoning the Sichuan earthquake and responsibility for it," said David Bandurski of Hong Kong University's China Media Project.

"Stylistically this is a fairly typical example of 'spring and autumn' writing … writing around the topic. [But] even though it is not very direct stylistically, I think its implications are very direct."

He added that while many links to the piece were now dead, the Shenzhen-based news portal QQ.com had posted it.

Ai, 53, was stopped by officials at Beijing airport on 3 April. Officials say he is under investigation for economic crimes, but police have not notified his family of any detention and relatives believe he has been targeted because of his activism.